Gormley: The mysticism of a just world

Shannon Gormley

Published on: May 9, 2016 | Last Updated: May 9, 2016 6:00 AM EDT

A young Syrian boy cries as he sits on the rubble after a missile fired by Syrian government forces hit a residential area in the Maghayir district in the old quarter of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on July 21, 2015. According to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights more than 35 homes were destroyed in the attack killing at least 18 civilians, adding that the death toll was likely to rise. AFP PHOTO / KARAM AL-MASRIKARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Images

Praise You, oh Gods of A Totally Fair Universe, for visiting the great destruction of war, pestilence, famine, death and forest fires upon other people. By allowing the rest of us to bear witness to these wondrous disasters, You help us tell a good person apart from a baddie, and confirm what we long suspected: We are morally superior to those less fortunate that us.

It’s exactly as Your humble servants, those most righteous environmental ideologues, tweeted last week: The residents of Fort McMurray brought fire unto themselves. As we watch Your holy flames engulf a city, might we remember that the universe and all lives therein are governed by your magical system of checks and balances. We thank You, God of Pop Spirituality, for Your infinite wisdom and these eternal truths: Karma’s a B-word, Santa Claus is watching, and life is fair just as long as it is happening to someone else.

So wicked were they, the residents of New Sodom and Gomorrah, Alta., so greedy, that they fell under the spell of those most foul temptations, food and housing. In their gluttony they accepted jobs where jobs were offered. And now that they’ve worshiped the false idol of basic necessities, You, Great God of Toxic Gaseous Substances, have taken Your revenge. Smite them, oh Earthly Mother, for they know what CO2 damage they do.

But bless those who give according to Your will; which is to say, bless those who give only to those who are already blessed.

And bless most of all one University of London study for bringing this message of hope to those who need it least: Potential donors, including atheists, hold on to a mystical belief that bad things come to those who deserve them, especially when those bad things are man-made tragedies involving deadly weapons.

In other words, some people may sabotage your system of perfect balance by donating money and help to cities that get set on fire. But many more people are at least spiritually advanced enough to withhold donations from cities that get bombed. Potential donors want to think that the world is just – which it is, of course, oh Lord of a Just World. People confirm this highly accurate belief by “blam(ing) victims when given half a chance.” As it happens, it’s even easier to blame people whose refugee tents were targeted by airstrikes than people whose houses were lost in a wildfire. Praise You for that.

The study’s author, Dr. Hanna Zagefka, talks about the belief in a just world like it’s a bad thing. But we know that You move in mysterious ways, mysterious enough that you reward our smugness with a scientific study that proves that even humans can mete out divine justice.

We know, then, that you are a God of Just War, because every war is a just war. In the same way, we know that 11 million Syrians deserved to be chased out of their homes, because 11 million Syrians have been chased out of their homes. We pray for those Syrians who had the arrogance to be born in a region where foreign powers like to wage proxy wars, and had the selfishness to ask for democratic rule. We pray that they stop being so arrogant and so selfish. We’ll do our part too, Gods of Parsimony, by continuing to ensure that every annual funding requirement for the Syrian crisis never comes close to being met.

Most of all, we’ll resist the false prophets who suggest that one can somehow discuss the relationship between climate change and increased wildfires, or religious fundamentalism and violence, or authoritarianism and conflict, without blaming the victims of specific tragedies. False prophets, they threaten a belief system that can’t countenance the possibility that the human condition is chaotic and uncertain – that indeed many things are.

Don’t worry, Gods of Everything Is As It Should Be. Nothing will convince us to disavow the knowledge that we are lucky and therefore we are good.

ShannonGormley is a global affairs columnist and freelance journalist.

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